There’s this part in the semi-digestible flick Raising Helen where the older, veteran mother, heavily pregnant sister gasps and presses her hand to her abdomen. “Shush, mommy’s talking right now,” she says. The younger, free-spirited sister says, “I can’t believe it! You just bossed the unborn!” It was the funniest scene in the whole damn movie.
When my daughter Colleen was little I thought I was a fairly lenient and indulgent mother. She was the focus of my pretty much undivided attention for nearly three years. I remembered my mother, grandmother and aunts juggling jobs and other kids when their own children were little. I didn’t have any of those things to worry about. It was just me and Colleen. How could she be anything but spoiled? It was something of a shock to learn otherwise.
Colleen and I were always out and about. We went hiking, met friends at restaurants and cafes, spent a lot of time on the boat with my mother or in the garden with my grandmother and she never seemed like that much of a hassle. She crawled and later toddled happily after the grown-ups, quickly began to participate in conversations or entertained herself with what few toys or books I’d pack with us or, more often, with whatever was available. She was a good baby, a perfect child.
There’s all sorts of literature on raising well-behaved children. There are “experts” and “theorists” out there to explain every whimper or snarl that emanates from the rose-bud lips of our babies and toddlers. We are given complicated “time-out” formulas, so many seconds per month of age, we are given tips and pointers on “dealing” with “problem children.” We are never, absolutely NEVER to correct or punish a young child for fear of permanently damaging their mental or emotional development. It’s a giant, confusing morass of restrictions on Mommy and Daddy while Baby holds her world in the palm of her sticky little hand. I was blessed with a perfect baby, but I realize now, eight or ten years later, her behavior was not an accident of genes or a blessing from the baby fairies. Colleen was a good child because I expected her to be.
There are few specific incidents from Colleen’s early childhood that I can recall needing to actively correct her behavior. Breakfast cereal getting spit out and smeared around earned a frown and a stern, “No.” Little fingers where they weren’t supposed to be got a “Colleen, that’s a no-no.” Defiance
We seem to have developed a kind of “cult of the child” in our culture. I’m not sure where I heard that phrase, but it seems to apply so perfectly in these cases where people want to revolve their entire world around a distractible, self-centered, morally apathetic being whose only goal is to meet its every need as quickly as possible by any means necessary. Yes, parents, look long and hard into the beautiful eyes of your precious progeny and you, too, will come to that conclusion. And, no, I don’t believe I’m being even the slightest bit unfair in my characterization.
Children are little animals that must be molded and formed into loving, empathetic and civilized human beings. They start off a bundle of nerves and instincts and slowly evolve the capacity to think and feel. When we indulge their little chimpanzee selves by ignoring rude behavior (screaming, spitting, biting, breaking things, not listening, messiness, etc.) or, worse, smiling and thinking it cute, we are allowing that behavior to continue, possibly into adulthood. Look at my ex-husband, for instance.
No, I’m not saying that parents are responsible for every criminal activity that their offspring may pursue into adulthood. What I am saying is that, when your darling little angel screams and bangs her milk glass repeatedly on the table after spitting soggy saltines onto the carpet of the restaurant, rather than smiling and shrugging at the annoyance of the wait-staff and your fellow patrons, take a look at how this behavior is going to translate when she is ten, or fifteen, or twenty. It might be cute to you now, but when she finally says, “You clean it up! You’re not the boss of me! Fuck you!” and slams the door in your face don’t say you weren’t warned.
When the “experts” tell you that spanking a child is wrong consider that, forty years ago, they were telling mothers not to hold their children more than absolutely necessary to care for their needs. When the “experts” say that biting a child that has just tried to take a chunk out of you or a playmate is completely unacceptable, consider that these same “experts” will tell you that a child’s cognitive development at two precludes you from expecting anything resembling rational behavior from them.
I say that they are right about at least the last part. Young children cannot be expected to know right from wrong. They can’t be expected to have empathy for others or anticipate negative consequences to impulsive actions. They can be expected to quickly associate negative feed-back with certain behaviors, however. If a bite to a playmate earns a bite from Mommy, bites will stop. If a screaming fit earns time alone in one’s bed, the fits will stop. If defiance earns a swat on the butt, defiance will stop. I can promise you these things. Young human children are not less intelligent than puppies. I promise.
The best part about this approach is that behavior problems will, I swear, be nipped in the bud. Tantrums, defiance and rudeness will not be an issue as the child gets older. A child that learns, before the age of four, to listen to her parents, be kind to others, clean up after herself and use her words rather than her temper will continue to do so (with consistent reinforcement) when she is older. A person who feels they need to constantly correct the rudeness of a ten-year-old should have been more diligent when that child was two. And, like training an elephant, handling a misbehaving two-year-old is a heckuvalot easier than handling an angry and frustrated pre-teen.
So, while I would totally agree that they are only babies once and that babies need to be loved, I would remind parents that a frown to a twelve-month-old will equal a spank to a two-year-old will equal a month of being grounded to a twelve-year-old will equal six months in juvenile hall to a fifteen-year-old. Figure that into your calculations while you’re trying to tally up seconds in “time-out” for your little one who has just broken your antique sugar bowl over the dog’s head. And if these calculations are anywhere near accurate, which I believe they are, then I am indeed justified in bossing the unborn.
“Morgan, settle down, mommy is trying to type.”
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